Immortal pork

Immortal pork | Daily Tribune

A year after his pointed “Mahiya naman kayo” (You should be ashamed) admonition, many expected the President to reinforce his call for integrity in the budget process.

Among those looking for that follow-through was former finance and budget secretary and former Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas governor Benjamin Diokno. He had hoped the President would draw a clear line by telling the lawmakers, in unequivocal terms: “This is my budget. Don’t touch it.”

For advocates of fiscal discipline, such a declaration would have underscored the Executive’s commitment to preserving the integrity of the National Expenditure Program before it reaches Congress, where the budget traditionally undergoes extensive revisions.

For three straight years from 2023, Congress raised the final amount of the budget through the manipulation of the Unprogrammed Appropriations (UA) where the corruption was rooted.

Diokno waited for Marcos to warn that he will use his line item veto, a power he called stronger than any American president holds, and to back it with a warning to his Cabinet: “Negotiate with Congress for more money than I gave you, and you’re fired.” Frustratingly, Marcos said nothing of the sort.

The pivot in the administration’s priorities unmasks the frantic search for a source of discretionary funds with a pork barrel character. The administration’s early years leaned on infrastructure, the Build Better More program, then drifted toward social spending and education. Now the tilt is toward local governments and devolution, which have the pork trademark.

Diokno revealed that local government units already sit on a surplus close to two percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) as their share of national taxes, which climbed to roughly a quarter to 40 percent of the total, and on top of that there is now a Local Government Support Fund, an extra pot dressed up as an incentive.

Thus, the pork barrel was relocated to the provinces. What did make the President’s speech was a 2027 infrastructure allocation of about four percent of GDP, when Diokno’s estimate is spending of five or six percent of economic output to keep the program credible.

So the administration is asking Filipinos to believe in devolution after taking away allocations on infrastructure, the program it built its early identity on, as a result of the flood control scandal. The investigations had a chilling effect on agencies, which became afraid to initiate projects only to later be investigated.

The lack of attention to making the budget efficient tells on the economy.

Growth projections that started at 6.5 to eight percent have collapsed to something closer to four percent this year, maybe five next year, which makes the state of the economy uncertain.

Thus, he encouraged the public to be vigilant about the 2027 budget, “because it is the election budget for 2028, and the people writing it in Congress have priorities that have nothing to do with the President’s.”

Marcos had a chance to draw a hard boundary around the one document that determines whether the next 18 months will be governed by policy or by patronage, and he let the moment pass.

A SoNA that never said “don’t mess with this budget” may be construed as an invitation.